We Were Brainwashed
by Ruby Red-ink
Summary: We all know that Saturday changed their lives, but just how far did that change go?


Disclaimer: I do not nor have I ever owned the rights to The Breakfast Club or its characters. But oh how I wish I did.

-We Were Brainwashed-

It was the first day back to school after that life altering Saturday in detention. Most would find the typical punishment inefficient and dull but to the five students that were in attendance that day, it was the most important day thus far in their short lives. It was the day Brian Johnson realized that there was more to life than perfect grades and pleasing his parents. It was the day Allison Reynolds discovered that she didn't have to be alone anymore. It was the day Andrew Clark decided that listening to others was fine, but following their every command so they can live viciously through you was a tragedy. It was the day that Claire Standish revealed there was more to her than wearing pink and shopping. It was also the day that John Bender stumbled upon 3 new friends that liked him for him and someone special who perhaps liked him just a little bit more.

Come Monday, none of them were feeling particularly prepared for what faced them. Though no one knew what transpired between them, they all still felt exposed and like they no longer belonged amongst this crowd of vapid high schoolers. Andy and Allison decided rather quickly to just go about their day somewhat normally with the vaguely obvious change that they walked the halls holding hands and she wore his sweatshirt. People stopped speaking midsentence to gawk at them as they passed, seemingly in shock. Brian was determined to spend the day with his old friends (and the new ones too if they let him) and to smile through every minute. Claire was a much different story. In her head she screamed and railed at her shallow friends for their comments about Andy and Allison, but she couldn't bring herself to open her mouth and defend them. She went home each evening feeling completely drained and guilty from keeping her silence.

Friday eventually rolled around and became another day that Claire could mark on her calendar of memorable milestones. She was sitting at lunch, eating only an apple, due to the vicious comments that had started up again and made her sick to her stomach. Suddenly, one of the girls, Christy, brought up a change in topic.

"Did you hear about that geek Brian Something? Jenna told me that Beth told her that he had a flare gun in his locker and was planning on trying to kill himself with it! My gosh, I thought he was smart!" She finished speaking and giggled to wait for the bashing to begin.

"Seriously?" One of the girls asked with a hint of concern coloring her tone. "I thought he had it all together, why would he want to commit suicide, that's so sad."

"Come on Becky, some people just can't cut it. Guess he was just too big of a coward to put himself out of our misery." Claire heard the words spew from Christy's mouth dripping with venom and her vision blurred and her face got hot as she snapped. She stood from her seat beside her and slapped her across the face.

"You have no idea what you're talking about so shut your mouth you hideous cow!" Claire shouted loud enough for the entire school to hear.

Christy sat in shock and Claire stood frozen in place still seething from the comments. Christy regained her composure enough to stand to face her.

"And what do you care, Claire?" She sneered. "Do you have a little crush on the nerd? Want to take him home to meet mommy and daddy? Hate to break it to you, hun, but you'd end up just like your parents: drunk out of your mind and busy trying to keep your affairs from your kids."

Claire couldn't take it anymore and threw herself at Christy, knocking them both to the floor. Claire sat up and straddled her to hold her down then punched her square in the nose. Christy got a lucky shot in when she started flailing around to get Claire off and knocked her in the lip with the huge ring she wore on her right hand. The teachers finally arrived to separate them, struggling to pull them apart as Claire was still reaching her hands toward Christy's throat, itching to wrap her hands around it, just for a minute. She looked up and saw Andy, Allison, and Brian all staring down at her with mixed expressions of awe of admiration. She calmed at the sight of them and the teacher holding her relaxed his arms to release her. Claire glared down at Christy who was sitting in the floor trying to stem the blood flow with her designer shirt.

"Don't you get it?" She started quietly looking around at the students and faculty that gathered. The volume of her voice increased as she turned her gaze back to the girl in front of her "What reason do you have for acting like a stuck up snob? Who gave you the right to tear someone down just because they're different; because they dress a certain way and don't care about being popular or aren't throwing their daddy's money around? Truth is, none of us are really all that different. We all have family problems and deal with the pressures of going to high school, why do we need to make things harder by worrying about what other people think and by trying to impress and outdo everyone else? What could that possible accomplish? We're all brainwashed and it's high time we started thinking for ourselves instead of following the herd."

Silence followed her speech for a few seconds before Andy and Brian broke out in applause and shouts which were quickly followed by many of the other students, and even some of the faculty, that surrounded her. Allison even managed to crack a smile at her new friend. Unfortunately, at this point, Richard Vernon made his presence known by stalking in to hand out punishments. Christy got off with a warning because Vernon was good friends with her father and she was sent to the nurse to get cleaned up. Sadly, Vernon turned on Claire and recognized her from detention that previous Saturday.

"You, red, my office, now," he stalked off and Claire scrambled after him barely concealing the pleased smile that stretched across her face.

Claire was forced to sit in the hard uncomfortable chairs outside of Vernon's office to wait for him to call one of her parents about her "brutish behavior." She smiled again as she thought of how proud she was of herself for finally standing up for what was right and not what was popular. Suddenly, and quite randomly, a thought came to her mind that she hadn't seen John Bender, the partial reason for her extensive change, the entire week. Had she just missed him? Or was he simply skipping out? Wait, what if something horrible happened at home? Was he okay? Her train of thought was brought to a screeching halt as Vernon threw open his door and glared at her until she got up and walked in.

"Sit. Now, I thought your last little adventure in detention would deter you from this sort of maniac behavior, but it only seems to have made you think you can act any way you please and think you can get away with it! That's gonna change right now missy. You've just earned 3 Saturdays worth of detention for your little show in there."

"But sir! That's not fair! Christy was in that fight too and she was saying some really terrible things! You can ask anyone sitting at that table, they heard her!" she shouted indignantly.

"Settle down. I didn't hear her say anything, so she just got a warning. You on the other hand initiated the violence so you will be getting a much harsher punishment. Not to mention you are a repeat offender," he finished, leveling her with a narrowed gaze. "And that will be another Saturday added to your sentence. Want to make that 5? No? Then shut up!"

Claire jogged hurriedly up the front steps of the school, arriving 10 minutes early despite the fact that she walked from her house. Her parents had fought all evening about who would take her to detention before she finally shouted to forget it that she would just walk and locked herself in her room the rest of the night. She kept her coat hugged tightly to her body to ward off the morning chill that lingered in the halls of the deserted school. She took the same seat she had previously upon arriving at the library and sat with her arms crossed to wait rather impatiently for Shermer High School's most notorious delinquent.

Three other disgruntled kids arrived just as the clock struck 7:00 to grudgingly take their seats without falling asleep in them. At 7:05 John Bender arrived in all his raggedy and ruggedly handsome glory only to stop dead in his tracks when he saw the beautiful redhead smiling back at him. He composed himself and made a show of slowly swaggering his way towards her to sit on the table beside her.

"I knew you couldn't stay away Cherry. You pull a fire alarm just to get back in here with me?" he smirked as he spoke to her.

"Actually," she began but was cut off by the abrupt and unwelcome entrance of Richard Vernon, resident warden.

"Bender, in a seat and stay there," his eyes roved over the juvenile prisoners as they stared sleepily and uninterestedly back at him. "Alright, listen up you punks. You will sit in these seats and not move and if I hear any noise in here, oh, there will be consequences. Now shut up and behave." He finished.

"But sir, no one said anything," Bender yelled after him as he turned towards the door.

"Shut it Bender or you're going in the closet!" He bellowed from his office.

Bender laughed and turned his head back towards Claire. "So, you were saying, why are you really in here?"

"Well…I kinda got into a fight," she said purposefully not looking at him.

Bender's eyes widened before laughing, "Are you serious? With who? Why?"

"Christy LaTrente, one of my _former_ friends. She's been saying stuff all week about Andy and Allison because they're dating and then yesterday she started in on Brian. Somehow she found out he tried to commit suicide. She called him a coward and practically said that he should have just killed himself and I just snapped. I slapped her then tackled her to the ground and punched her in the nose."

"Wow. I didn't know you had it in you, Cherry. I gotta say I'm kinda proud. Guess I rubbed off on you," he smiled and waggled his eyebrows at the innuendo. She rolled her eyes and playfully slapped him in the arm, but brought a hand to her mouth as her smile stretched her bruised lip too far, "Ouch."

Bender frowned in concern and reached a hand out to gently take her chin and examine her lip more closely. "What happened?"

"Christy got a lucky shot in while she was flailing around on the ground. She has this stupid huge ring she wears all the time. She pretends its real, but that's a load of bull, it's faker than her chest," she smirked and chuckled to herself.

Bender laughed again and leaned in to kiss her on the cheek when she turned her head towards him and their lips met instead. They pulled apart, both smiling, and Bender jerked his head towards the back of the library so they could have more privacy. She nodded and got up to follow him. They sat back in the spot where everyone had deigned to share their deepest darkest secrets. Bender had his back to a bookshelf and Claire leaned against him as he put his arm over her shoulders.

"You know Claire," he surprised her by using her actual name and speaking in a rare serious tone, "I wish I had half the guts to do what you did."

She rose up slightly to look at him, her brows knitted in confusion. "What do you mean? You have plenty of guts. You stand up to everyone and defend what you believe in, that's pretty courageous."

He sighed and turned his head slightly to look at her. "Did you notice that I didn't make an appearance at school this week?"

"Yeah, I did actually. I was going to ask you about that. Where were you?" She asked laying her head against his shoulder.

"I was skipping out; after all that talk last Saturday about doing what's right and not caring about what everyone else thinks, I chickened out. I couldn't face the fact that you all would probably forget you'd even met me and for some reason that bothered me more than if my friends had bailed. I spent the entire week thinking it out. Why would I give a crap what these people think, I only knew them for a few hours? When I walked in here today and saw you sitting there, it finally hit me. I actually care about you guys. I care about you," he said and kissed her forehead.

Bender glanced down again at Claire after a prolonged silence only to find that she had a huge grin plastered across her face. "What are you smiling at?"

"You." She said and kissed him full on the mouth. She pulled away to speak again, "You just make me happy. Who cares what those jerks at school think. We've always got the Breakfast club, right?"

"Always, Cherry."

After several moments of sweet silence that was only broken by random kisses, Bender had to ask another question. "So how long are you in for, seeing as you're becoming quite the delinquent with two detentions in a row?"

"Suppose since I'm not necessarily on Vernon's good side, he decided to give me a harsher punishment. I'm stuck in here with you for the next month," she grinned at him letting him know that it was in no way a punishment for her.

"Oh, how terrible for you. What will you do with your time?" he smirked and leaned in to kiss her again, neither one aware that Vernon had just burst through the door on a war path looking for them.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Just a little side note here. I was a little concerned about putting in those comments about suicide as I know they can hit pretty close to home. I just want to make it clear that I don't think suicide or thoughts of suicide should be taken lightly and that should you ever start to have these thoughts, please seek someone to talk to, whether professionally or if it's just a friend. Heck, make a friend by sharing personal things like this. Sorry for the PSA, but I really felt it was necessary. Read and Review please!


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